Synology DS918+ & HDDs (Windows / Defrag / Read & Write / Longevity)

FenFox

Limp Gawd
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Dec 20, 2016
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I have a few questions about Western Digital 10 TB Red & Seagate Ironwolf 10 TB HDD's.

1.) I currently use some of these drives in my Windows desktop PC. I'm wondering how much overhead (free storage space) I should leave to keep the read/writes running optimally and also so Windows can defrag them. This seems to be a highly controversial subject for some reason. I've seen people/articles suggest 15-20% for Windows Defrag. Others claim this is an outdated estimate and instead suggest 5% or even lower. Does anyone know for sure?

2.) I'll eventually be moving these drives over to my Synology DS918+ NAS and using RAID 5 or SHR-1 and the same question as above applies. If I want to keep the read & writes running optimally and if I want to keep them defragged via whatever software solution Synology uses, how much free space should I leave available?

The reason I'm asking these questions is because I have enough data to 'top off' these drives and then some, but I don't want to do it at the expense of performance/HDD longevity/the proper functioning of Windows/Synology defrag.
 
Windows - larger drives need less % (unless your files are just gigantic, like contiguous HD video or single-file VMs). You'd be fine with 5%, probably even lower. I'm sure you could calculate a specific number based on your single largest file stored on the drive.

Synology will probably use EXT4 (regardless of RAID physical layer, the file system is independent of that) - no defrag required, the file system auto-optimizes itself. Again, 5% is a good number, could probably be much lower.

Even if you fill them up entirely 100% and it can't defrag at all - it won't affect spinner drive life - just performance.
 
Windows - larger drives need less % (unless your files are just gigantic, like contiguous HD video or single-file VMs). You'd be fine with 5%, probably even lower. I'm sure you could calculate a specific number based on your single largest file stored on the drive.

Synology will probably use EXT4 (regardless of RAID physical layer, the file system is independent of that) - no defrag required, the file system auto-optimizes itself.

I think the largest files are about 80-100 GB. However, others are much much smaller; we're talking Windows Notepad small. So what would you suggest as a % with files that large?
 
I'd say 2x your largest files size... on a 10T drive that's only like 2%.

If you get down into the weeds you could probably base it off block size and installed RAM size and get a lot less than that (since the drive is going to be doing read/writes at the block level).
 
I'd say 2x your largest files size... on a 10T drive that's only like 2%.

If you get down into the weeds you could probably base it off block size and installed RAM size and get a lot less than that (since the drive is going to be doing read/writes at the block level).

Ok, so if my largest file on the drive is 100 GB, you're saying I should just leave 200 GB free? Or 2% of 9.09 TB is 181.8 gigabytes (for both Windows and the NAS?)
Hmm, based on my own personal use, I do notice the drives (in Windows) *seem to slow down a bit when they start to go into the red. Like 697 GB left of 9.09 TB.
 
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